US sales: September 2017, brands

The decline in the US car market finally halted in September, and not just by dint of the market barely crawling back into the black – growth was a sturdy 6.3%. It is not entirely clear what caused this reversal – was the market just making up for a disappointing summer performance, was it the fact that September’17 had one more selling day than September’16, or are there reasons to believe that this may be the end of a slide that seemed unstoppable even last month. Whatever the case, the SAAR (Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate) bounced back handily from 16.13 million in August to 18.58 million, exceeding all expectations for the month, and ranking as the highest value recorded since June 2005, when SAAR reached 20.64 million rate. Only time will tell if this renaissance will last, though.

September’17 Highlights:

Most of the carmakers in the Top 10 did well in September, with the highest growth unusually coming from the Top 3: sales at Toyota and Chevrolet both grew by 17.4%, while they grew at Ford by 9.3%

The only brand in the Top 10 that could match the Top 3’s performance was Nissan, with sales up by 9.3%, making up for the double-digit decline in sales registered in August, even if the gap to Honda in YTD sales grew larger still after the latter overtook it last month

By comparison to the brands ahead of them, sixth-placed Jeep and seventh-placed Hyundai lost sales in August, though the former’s 3.8% fall in sales was its least bad performance since January’17

Subaru just about kept its streak of year-on-year growth with September’17 sales just 0.4% higher than last year

By comparison, the 6.6% growth recorded by Kia was a truly good performance for the brand, marking the first month of growth since September’17, and allowing the brand to rank one place higher than last year, pushing Ram one spot down to 10th

Just outside of the Top 10 things were pretty interesting as well, starting with Volkswagen in 12th, which sees its sales go up by a third compared to this time last year thanks to its new three-row crossovers, the Tiguan L and Atlas, making this the highest year-on-year sales growth the brand has enjoyed since December’12

Among the mainstream brands, Mitsubishi once again saw its sales rise (by 17.2%), GMC is clearly benefitting from the new Acadia (sales up 9.4%), and even Mazda saw its sales rise by 3.4%

Once again, though, the number of mainstream brands who suffered sales drops was larger: Dodge suffered a sales drop of 30.3%, Fiat saw its sales fall by 24.3%, while both Buick and Chrysler also suffered double-digit sales declines; still, this is nothing compared to the 60.2% drop in sales over at Smart

In fact, the only luxury brands not to record positive sales growth in September were Mercedes-Benz and Maserati

Also, while year-on-year comparison is not possible, surely Alfa Romeo will not be too happy with its sales figures which are hovering just above the 1,000 mark

Among the exclusive brands McLaren was the stand-out performer, recording 34.8% growth, while Rolls-Royce and Lamborghini also recorded small growth (the latter was once again outsold by McLaren)

Things were not so rosy over at Ferrari, whose sales were down by 19.3%, and at Bentley, whose sales fell by almost 45%; it is quite likely that both are suffering from buyers waiting for new models: the Portofino (California T replacement) and the new Continental GT

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About Krzysztof Wozniak

Kriss grew up in Poland reading German car magazines, before moving to England and graduating to the British magazines, which he still considers the best in the world and continues reading them after he'd moved to the US. In college he promised himself he's buy himself a used Porsche before he turned 30 (not to be accused of having a mid-life crisis), but instead family needs dictated a Subaru Outback. Still waiting for that perfect moment to buy a used 2008-ish Cayman...
You can find all his articles Here.